Kamardin bin Hashim

On the judicial record

Illustrates a Court of Appeal judge engaging across drug and homicide appeals, electoral judicial review against the Election Commission, and defamation, testing both the competence of the challenge and the soundness of the decision below.

Kamardin bin Hashim sits in the Court of Appeal, and this collection is largely criminal appellate work with a public-law and civil component. Drug appeals feature through an appeal against convictions and sentences for trafficking in and possession of dangerous drugs and whether the trial judge erred in the findings on which the convictions rested. Homicide appears through a criminal appeal against conviction and sentence for causing death, including death caused by dangerous driving, framed as culpable homicide. Public and electoral law is engaged in a judicial-review matter brought by a representative and registered voter, in which the court considered the leave threshold and the standing of the applicants against the Election Commission — a question about who may challenge the conduct of the electoral process. Defamation reaches the court through an appeal arising from proceedings involving a hotel and its counterparties, in which the availability and scope of the pleaded defences fell to be considered. Because the Court of Appeal sits in panels and its rulings bind or guide the courts below, these decisions reflect collective reasoning to which this judge contributed, and each turns on whether the court below applied the correct legal standard before the appellate court will intervene. Private individuals and accused persons are referred to by role; corporate, governmental and statutory parties are named. A recurring theme is the appellate court's scrutiny of the trial court's findings before it will disturb a conviction, and its attention to the threshold questions — leave, standing, competence — that decide whether a challenge may proceed at all. The collection illustrates how a single appellate judge engages across drug and homicide appeals, electoral judicial review and defamation, applying in each the discipline of asking first whether the matter is properly before the court and then whether the decision below can stand on the evidence and the law.